Mexico, 2025

And now I'll give the floor to His Excellency Juan Ramon de la Fuente Ramirez, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Mexico. Madam President, Excellencies, The time of women has come and Mexico has made this very clear through the landslide election of Dr Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo as the first female president of our country. It's an honour for me to participate in this assembly representing her and being the voice of a government that is delivering the transformation of the public life of Mexico. I come from a country that was born in the wisdom, bravery and dignity of its original peoples with a rich political history of extraordinary heroes and heroines who built a free, independent and sovereign country. Now we must also say that we are becoming an ever more prosperous country with shared prosperity. The Mexican people are a fraternal people both within and beyond our borders. We have shown this being an active and responsible member of the United Nations community under the premise of defending the dignity and the rights of individuals and nations who love peace with full respect for the sovereign equality of states. The historic time that we are living through in Mexico under the leadership of our first female president is rooted in a vision that we have called Mexican humanism. The trail blazed over the last seven years is a clear one and has a universal vocation that is to build a society based on democracy, freedom, equality and shared prosperity for the benefit of everyone, putting the poor first. The guiding pillar of this project is a vision of justice. Full recognition of the dignity of people and inclusive social development without discrimination. It is a project that establishes a separation between political and economic power that moves towards achieving a moral economy that seeks coordination and cooperation with external actors and doesn't accept any type of subordination because national sovereignty is non-negotiable. This new way of doing politics has given voice and agency to those who were historically marginalised and forgotten, women, girls, indigenous peoples and persons of African descent, youth, LGBT plus persons and the elderly. And the results speak for themselves. The UN itself has recognised that 13.5 million Mexicans were raised out of poverty thanks to a policy of labour justice and social programmes. Inequality is being reduced, peace is being built and violence contained. Justice has reached indigenous peoples. There is democracy, freedoms, plurality and the right to dissent. Justice is being transformed and today an indigenous person is President of the Supreme Court of Justice of our nation. We have the largest reforestation programme in the world with a billion trees planted. Girls, boys and youth are being included in social programmes and have access to school. Elderly adults have a guaranteed and universal pension and women are exercising power. These are some of the good things that we have achieved in this fourth transformation of public life in Mexico and that deserve to be proudly proclaimed loud and clear from this podium, from this rostrum. As members of the international community, the challenges that we face are huge. Poverty persists in a world of exorbitant wealth. There are countries that spend more servicing their debt than they do in investments in health and education for their peoples and expenditure on arms has tripled, has grown at tripled the rate of the global economy, just to mention a few. And the diagnostic has always been clear. The arms race, the immoral concentration of wealth, violations of international law and of human rights are the fuel that fuel the flames of war and violence. Mexico has not forgotten the lessons of history. Eighty years ago, we participated in founding the United Nations, convinced of the moral obligation that we have as a nation to contribute to avoiding the scourge of wars. It is not a coincidence that many of the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter are reflected in the constitutional principles of our foreign policy, the self-determination of peoples, the peaceful settlement of disputes, prohibiting the threat or the use of force, the legal equality of states, cooperation for development and the defence of human rights. Without seeking to be exhaustive, please allow me to share some of the premises that can contribute to getting the international community back on track. Number one, the world needs a moral economy of well-being. It's necessary to mobilise regional coalitions around well-being in order to deliver effective cooperation for development that acknowledges that fighting poverty is the investment that gives the best return, both financially and socially speaking, an international financial architecture that includes criteria of collective well-being and trade that is grounded in clear rules with shared benefits between peoples. Number two, peace. Peace is built from the bottom up. Ensuring well-being involves addressing the structural causes of violence. Solving conflicts often begins in the home, it continues in education and then in decent jobs with fair wages and social security that enables the inclusion of the whole of the social fabric. The international community must take a look with a more critical and innovative spirit at what youth today have as alternatives. Similarly, it's the role of the international community to put an end to the arms race, not only when it comes to nuclear weapons but also the illicit trafficking of firearms and the spiral of expenditure on arms that is feeding poverty and exacerbating conflict. In response to the staggering proliferation of weapons, it is necessary to respond with politics, mediation, diplomacy, law and dialogue. The United Nations must play a much more active role in the prevention and the solving of these conflicts. Multilateralism must become again the space where disputes are settled and this leads us to our third premise. Number three, it's necessary to uphold international law alongside human rights. If we really want to avoid the proliferation of conflicts that have an impact on the lives and the dignity of people, we must respect international law, including international human rights law and international humanitarian law. Whether it's in the Middle East, in Europe, in Africa, in Latin America or in any other part of the world, war is taking an intolerable toll and it threatens triggering an even larger escalation of conflict that could even be profoundly destructive for the whole world. The wars in Gaza, in Ukraine and in all the other places that they're taking place, must end now. We will not tire in insisting on the urgent appeal for a ceasefire to always achieve a negotiated solution with the participation of all parties directly involved. There can be no negotiated solution if any of the parties are excluded. The solution must be a diplomatic one, otherwise it will be hardly achievable. Mexico will always advocate for the peaceful settlement of disputes and that's why we reject sanctions and trade embargoes that only harm the well-being of peoples and do not contribute to building regions of peace or prosperity. We reiterate unambiguously our historic position against the embargo on Cuba and our appeal to remove this country from the list of countries that sponsor terrorism, state sponsors of terrorism. Respecting international law is safeguarding peace. It's the antidote to a logic of power that makes the weakest nations even more vulnerable. In the words of our Benemerito de las Américas, our eminent Benito Juárez García, everything through reason and law and nothing by force. Madam President, the struggle for justice is rooted in the conviction that all people are equal before the law. Compelled by fraternity to understand each other and to respect each other as equals in dignity and in rights. Mexico has a tireless commitment to human rights, to freedoms and to non-discrimination in the world. We condemn classism, racism and all forms of discrimination including discrimination based on sexual diversity or gender identity. We particularly reject the criminalisation of people who, for whatever reason, have been forced to leave their homes and forced to migrate, whether it's to seek refuge or to escape conditions of injustice or poverty. For us, migrants are people with rights who care for their families and who contribute with their efforts to improving and strengthening their host communities. It's only by understanding the phenomenon and addressing its structural causes that we will be able to move towards a framework of global and regional collaboration that will enable us to move towards a safer and more orderly mobility. Let there be no doubt, Mexico will not tire in ensuring the attention to and protection of Mexican nationals who are outside of our country and those that deserve all of our support and assistance. In this framework of justice and rights, we are including the fight of women and for gender equality because despite the progress, there are still gaps and violence against women in the world that are wrenching away freedom from girls, young women and women in all of their diversity. Thirty years since the Beijing Declaration and Programme of Action, the diagnostics and the roadmap are clear and we invite all nations to mobilise to accelerate the progress towards gender equality. In my country, the transformation of consciences has been intrinsically linked to the fight for gender equality. Today in Mexico, we are seeing gender parity prevail in the legislative and judicial branches of government, in public policies. We are including a strict gender perspective and that has been enshrined in our constitution. Madam President, 80 years since the United Nations was created, we must recognise the grave dilemma that it faces and this is something that cannot be delayed. The United Nations must assert itself once again as an institution that not only helps to contain war and prevents pandemics, but also shapes narratives that lead to public policies for human dignity. We believe that the United Nations must go back to its purposes and its principles and return to its fundamental pillars which are the maintenance of international peace and security, sustainable development and the protection and promotion of human rights. It is necessary to get back to these objectives and everything must revolve around this, from working on the budget to reviewing the thousands of mandates that we have given to the Secretariat, many of which really are not that useful today. The legitimacy of the United Nations will depend increasingly more on its ability to respond to the grave challenges that the world faces. We trust that the next Secretary General, who we hope will be a woman from our region, will accelerate progress. Will accelerate the transformation process that we set forth with the objective of ensuring peace and justice as well as the well-being and freedom of people, the sustainability of the planet and shared prosperity. In Mexico, Excellencies, colleagues, Madam President, in Mexico the time of women has come and it is going very well for us. We think that at the United Nations also the time for women has come. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.